Bill Blass Speaker Series

Upcoming

Past speakers

Please see the archive for recent Bill Blass speakers.

We've been honored to host the following guests in previous years: 

  • Sharon Kilfoyle, textile artist
  • Alastair Macleod, chairman of UK-based Hand & Lock Embroidery
  • Fran Morris-Rosman, Director of the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation
  • Lesley Frowick, Halston’s niece and author of the book Halston: Inventing American Fashion
  • Joanne Eicher, Author, dress scholar and Professor emeritus, University of Minnesota
  • Barbara Natoli Witt, jewelry artist
  • Alexander Julian, Fashion and Textile Designer
  • Brian Smith, founder of Ugg boots
  • Carmen Benavente, artist and author of Ninhue: Stitching Chilean Rural Life
  • Erich Biehle, textile designer
  • Jo Paoletti, Dress scholar and author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America and Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution
  • Joe Kucharski, Costume Designer and Project Manager, Walt Disney Imagineering
  • John Tiffany, author of Eleanor Lambert: Empress of Fashion
  • Julian Roberts, fashion designer and instructor of Subtraction Cutting
  • Natalie Chain, fashion designer and founder of sustainable fashion company Alabama Chanin
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and paper/textile artist Mary Hark
  • Susan Neill, Exhibitions Planning Director, the Field Museum
  • Lora Morlock, lecturer, Ryerson University